Asteroids May Have Brought Sugar to Earth

CBNobi writes: "An article over at space.com reports of sugar-like substances contained in meteorite found on earth. This discovery may support the theory that life on earth was seeded from outer space."

Comments

um

[nadie]

>"This discovery may support the theory that
>life on earth was seeded from outer space."

Now all you need is a theory on where life in outer space was seeded from?

There seems to be a step missing

[pubudu]

I don't understand how the presence of sugars in asteroids suggests that meteors planted sugars on Earth. If sugars can be created through inorganic processes, where's the argument that such processes were not responsible for the sugars on Earth? If they cannot be so created, then sugars are not the seeds required for life, and so there is no reason to suspect that life was seeded by meteors. I don't find the discussion at the end of the article particularly helpful in this regard.

Re:There seems to be a step missing

[codexus]

You're right. The basic molecules of life (including sugars) could have been created on earth. The problem is that we are currently unable to explain the process of how that would happen.

It's then logical to think that maybe, we can't explain it because it didn't happen and instead these molecules came from space. Explaining how they are created in space is also a very important question in order to confirm this "extraterrestrial" origin of the components of life. But this process seems to exist since we find, for example, sugars in meteors

There's a lot of open questions remaining, and a lot of fascinating subjects to research.

Re:There seems to be a step missing

[Mr. Slippery]

Without a creator deity (let's call him God), you can't explain eternal life. Oops, I forgot, you probably don't believe in that either.

No, I don't, but the questions are quite orthagonal. Creator god(ess)(es/s) still wouldn't explain the continuity of psychology after bodily death, because we still have to explain the existance of the creator.

Saying "X was created by Y" leads to the question "So what created Y?" If your answer is "Y is eternal", why not skip the middleman and asusme that X is eternal in the first place?

And if there is no God and no eternal life, why worry about morals? There would be no right and no wrong? The biggest dog eats the most, might make right, etc.

I don't worry about morals at all. Consult any Zen master or Taoist sage for further enlightenment.

I just try to act compassionately, simply because it suits me to do so - not out of any fear of "eternal damnation" or "the wrath of god(ess)(es/s)", but because my experience is that it leads to less suffering. Metaphysics has nothing to do with it; speculations about some process whereby the fiction "I" call "my self" might continue after this body dies, don't help me figure out how to live this life at all.

Re:There seems to be a step missing

[pubudu]

To believe this, you still have to come up with an answer to where did it come from originally. I believe that it is much easier to believe in God than to believe that all this stuff just happened to occur in the right order.

I'd like to retract the confusion of my original post in order to answer this one. I reread the space.com article, and there do seem to be reasons that it would be easier for such molecules to have formed in space than on Earth. It seems that the primordial formation of our solar system would have been favorable to their production (in some discernable amount), and as all--or at least most--of the stuff in the solar system came from this primordial mixing of gases, it would be reasonable that some simple sugars would be found in asteroids. (Of course, such processes could also be the source of these sugars on Earth, it having formed from the same stuff; asteroid impact would still not be needed for seeding life.)

This is easier to believe than the first chapter of Genesis because it is the product of our own reasoning. God may have created the heavens and the earth, but the jump from belief to knowledge requires that we know how He did so. The Bible does not tell us the processes that took place ("And there was light" isn't very helpful in this regard); it at most gives us the first cause and result ("And God said ..." and the above quote).

Moreover, since God does not speak in the Bible of simple sugars, other planets or asteroids, or penguins, we must, if we are to remain believers, admit that God did not give us every detail. (Do we really need to know about polyhydroxylated compounds in order to be led to belief?) We should not, then, assume that the discovery of every detail that is not mentioned in the Bible is an attempt to contradict the Bible, and thus need not assert the Bilical account as an alternative.

Of course, the order of creation is open to dispute, if God meant that early account to be a scientific explanation of our origins.

Re:There seems to be a step missing

[SEE]

Sure, it's easy to believe Genesis 1:1. Similarly, it's easy to believe that all existence is an illusion (Buddhist), that all existence is part of a chain of never-ending self-destorying-and-recreating universes (Hindu), that we're all a simulation running in a computer somewhere and that our belief in free will is a computer-induced delusion, or any of a dozen other theories.

But none of those theories are relevant to the question of the origin of life. Even if God or whatever specifically decreed each step on the transformation of inert matter into human beings, the scientific study of what happened at each stage is still relevant -- at the very least, as a method of studying the way in which God's mind works.

all i can say is...

[msouth]

...sweet!

Sugarcoating?

[Archanagor]

Could it be that somewhere, far, far away they're actually sugarcoating the asteroids as they send them to us?

Re:Sugar (dumb blonde joke actually happened)

[akiaki007]

This actually happened at Harvard.

Re:about to hit the penicillin

[Bonker]

James Hogan's 'Gentle Giants' books do quite a bit with this particular idea.

Apparently there are silicon-rich rocks...

[SIGFPE]

...on Mars. Silicon is an important ingredient in the manufacturing of computers and according to some experts it is possible to construct artificial life using computers. The inescapable conclusion is that this is evidence that life once inhabited the Martian surface.

Nature

[Schwamm]

There are also a couple of articles over at Nature.

Meteoritics: Life's sweet beginnings?

and

Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth

Mmmm....

[waldoj]

...aaaaa-steroids.

Re:The key is . . .

[JJ]

If a certain set of sugars and amino acids are found in space and delivered to our planet in its primordial state, then this implies that other planets capable of reaching the primordial state couls also have the same origin. This boosts the odds on SETI and would tie Earth-bound life closer to any other that could be found. (Apart from the force that is.)

Re:Not that kind of sugar!

[Happy go Lucky]

It's not that kind of sugar - not what you put in your coffee to make it sweet! I believe they are talking about four different sugars that make up DNA and RNA. These four sugars are called nucleotide bases and have the names adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. So, not quite as fun as rock candy. :)

Um, those are nucleic acids. They're definitely not sugars. All sugars (yes, ALL sugars) have the formula n(CH20). That means the composition is always an integer multiple of one carbon atom, two hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom. That's actually the definition of sugar (well, carbohydrate, anyway).

All of the nucleic acids include amino groups, NH2. That makes this easy, since sugars NEVER include nitrogen. The only sugars involved in nucleotide bases are ribose and deoxyribose, both of which are five-carbon-atom sugars matching the formula above.

I couldn't get to the article. I'm going to guess, however, that it was referencing simple carbohydrates, one- or two-carbon sugars.

First contact:

[Alsee]

Pardon me, can we borrow a cup . . .

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